Jeff Stibel

On August 22, 2016, Kobe Bryant and Stibel launched Bryant-Stibel, a venture capital firm focused on different businesses including media, data, gaming and technology, with $100 million in funding. Starting in 2013, the pair had invested in 15 businesses together.

As an academic and scientist, Stibel focused most of his academic career on cognitive science. He received degrees in philosophy and psychology as an undergraduate at Tufts University and counts Daniel Dennett as a mentor. He received a degree in cognitive science at Brown University, where he studied under James A. Anderson. He also studied business, marketing and economics under Dan Ariely at MIT Sloan School of Management [reference needed]. He received an honorary PhD in business from Pepperdine University and gave the commencement address in 2015. Stibel has published numerous academic articles in cognitive science, psychology, economics and business,[references needed] and he is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.

At age 32, he became one of the youngest public company CEOs in America and opened the NASDAQ stock market on June 15, 2007. He is also an amateur cognitive scientist, a New York Times bestselling author, and a weekly columnist for the USA Today.

Stibel left graduate school to start Simpli, a search and marketing company that was sold to NetZero in 2001 and again to ValueClick in 2004. He started Simpli with professors from Brown University (James A. Anderson, Steve Reiss), MIT (Dan Ariely) and Princeton University (George A. Miller), as well as entrepreneurs David Landan, Andrew Duchon, Paul Allopenna, Peter Delgrosso and Carl Dunham. He later helped form United Online, a public company that acquired NetZero and Juno in 2001 and later bought Classmates.com and FTD. In 2005, he left United Online to become the CEO of Interland, a public company that was rebranded by Stibel and team as a new company called Web.com.